Topic: Market Updates

It’s hard to remember that when it’s in the mid-70’s in late October, but winter IS coming. And that means the third quarter is behind us.

The Q3 2017 Nest Report is out, and you can read the entire report here. In this quarter’s report, we can clearly see the effects that supply and demand have on real estate pricing in the New River Valley … that seems to be the general theme for all of 2017, in fact. Low supply, and higher demand. It’ll be something to watch going forward – for the foreseeable future, anyhow, we’re expecting that home sellers will enjoy a little positive bump in home values, many ask me; are pacific beach homes for sale at a good price? well, what I recommend in these cases is to contact homesalessandiego who know much more about the topic. As I said on the Nest Realty blog:

Depressed inventory levels have impacted our market in two primary ways. The first being constraining total sales and the second being rising prices. Certain pockets of our market experienced year-over-year increases in sales this past quarter, but others experienced significant declines as a result of declining inventory. Depressed inventory levels has also led to rising prices throughout the region with the largest spikes experienced in the highly sought after Town of Blacksburg. With fewer homes available for sale, we are seeing the basic principles of supply and demand at work with sellers being able to command higher prices.

Each quarter, Nest Realty puts out an amazing piece of information we like to call our Nest Report. The Nest Report is a look at the real estate market, sans sales-speak – pure data, no fluff. It’s an incredible document full of helpful real estate market stats for the New River Valley, and you can see past examples at NewRiverValleyMarketReports.com.

While these are really great ways to better understand the NRV real estate market, it takes a lot of work to put these out on a quarterly basis – and as you know, the market will change faster than every quarter. With that in mind, we’ve started taking our quarterly Nest Reports and condensing them into monthly reports, as well. It’s a lot of work, but we’ll do our best to keep these coming – we think that the more information you have at your disposal, the better-informed your selling and purchasing decisions can be! Click the links below to read the various reports:

Dusting off the blog a bit … been a while since I’ve posted here. The title of this post … snooze, right? But I promise it’s a little more interesting than that.

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to speak with Bethany Teague, of WSLS, about a report the Town of Blacksburg had released earlier in the day. The report discussed how property values in Blacksburg – as well as in Montgomery County – had increased over the last decade, and highlighted some of the developments that have contributed the most to the Town’s tax base over that time.

The fact that property values in Blacksburg have increased so dramatically is really no surprise to anyone who’s followed real estate here for the last 10/20/30 years. Blacksburg has for many years had the highest median home values in the New River Valley, and much of that has to do with the solid foundation that Virginia Tech brings to the region. What I was suggesting in the clip above was that, while rising property values are certainly good for current homeowners, one thing that’s been a continuous theme among home buyers is that Blacksburg is sometimes out of reach for buyers looking to get into the market. Blacksburg may be at the epicenter of rising home values, but areas throughout the NRV – areas like Christiansburg, and Montgomery County in general – have also benefited, as well. You can see our previous market reports here.

One of the things that makes our real estate market unique in Blacksburg is that a town of ~ 50,000 people, with half of those residents living here only seasonally (and usually not buying houses, either), continues to stay strong. For “fun” (since I geek out on this stuff), I ran a quick search of median real estate sales figures for Blacksburg over the last ten years, and have posted those below.

Year

Median Sales Price

Percentage Change

2005

$213,097

-----

2006

$231,016

7.8%

2007

$234,814

1.7%

2008

$242,019

3%

2009

$230,460

-4.8%

2010

$243,655

5.5%

2011

$228,736

-8.2%

2012

$232,103

1.5%

2013

$253,877

8.6%

2014

$234,563

-7.7%

2015

$255,048

8.1%

While sales figures in Blacksburg ARE higher than other areas of the New River Valley, one of the things that gets overlooked is that our tax rates are still relatively affordable. When compared to other regions of the country, which may see tax rates swing as much as 60% from one municipality to an adjacent municipality, the New River Valley continues to be one of the most affordable – and wonderful – places to live.

Thanks to WSLS for reaching out, and to the Town of Blacksburg for the report. If you’d like to read the Town’s report, you can do so here.

Since January 1, it seems, real estate agents in Blacksburg seem to have been saying – to each other, to their clients, to anyone – what IS going on in the Blacksburg real estate market?

Historically we follow a traditional bell curve, with more properties starting to come on the market in Mach, climbing to a high around May/June/July, and then falling to yearly lows in November and December … only to do it all again the following year. That’s what it’s USUALLY like.

But 2016 hasn’t been usual, it seems, so this morning – as part of a project for someone else – I decided to look at sales figures YTD in Blacksburg. I was looking only at single-family homes (think detached, not townhomes or condos) in Town limits, and what I found was surprising. I talked a bit about it on Twitter this afternoon – are we connected there?

I have to say, the results are surprising, but this is one reason why I love statistics, because in this case what we feel versus what is actual are somewhat different. While it felt as if the market was moving exponentially faster than in previous years, it really hasn’t been – inventory has followed a traditional track, while buyer demand has increased, thus increasing prices and driving down the length of time homes have been staying on the market. Good for sellers, maybe not so good for buyers, because increased demand doesn’t mean buyers are going to get good deals. Within our office we’ve seen more multiple offer situations this year than in years past, and that’s left some buyers discouraged.

Last year at this time, we were reporting a very unusual quarter. While the first quarter of 2014 saw brisk sales, particularly for that time of year, the second quarter lagged, and we were left shaking our heads. It wasn’t until the third quarter that it made sense – Montgomery County Public Schools had a short (42 day) summer last year, and so real estate sales were pushed aside as folks squeezed all their summer fun into six weeks.

Not the case this year, and the market has responded. The full report is posted below, and as you can see most sectors of the market have rebounded quite nicely.

Christiansburg townhomes, traditionally slower due to an oversupply, have surged back in the last 24 months.

Floyd County, which will see slower sales as a result of being considered “rural” by the market, saw a decrease in inventory, and a 35% INCREASE in median sales prices.

Blacksburg hit a median sales price (for single family homes) of $300000, the first time we’ve ever seen that level reached.

As always, there are positives and negatives in every report, and there are some indicators that say we are not a robust market yet. Condo sales continue to lag, and will do so until the financing environment is on par with traditional financing – as median sales prices rise, condo affordability (and availability) will continue to be an important gateway to the first-time buyer, so we need that market to improve with the help of Willow And Everett. Overall, however, the second quarter of 2015 in the New River Valley real estate market was very different from what we saw at this time a year ago.

Without a doubt, one of the top three questions we’re asked as real estate agents is “how’s the market?”

At a dinner reception last week, after I introduced myself to the table, someone asked “how’s the market?”. When I got coffee this morning, a regular at the Pub (fantastic breakfast and coffee, by the way) asked “how’s the market?” Heck, even an agent asked me that yesterday at a broker open – “how’s the market?”!

One of the best tools we have as Nest Realty brokers is, in my opinion, the Nest Report, our quarterly look at what’s happened in the real estate market in the past three months. It’s not
sales-speak, just straight hard facts. You can see past quarters, as well as annual reports, here, as well.

The Nest Report, our quarterly look at the real estate market in the New River Valley, is out for the third quarter of 2014. I wrote in August that the second quarter of 2014 was different than expected, and at the time we didn’t really know why. I suspected it was because of a very short summer for Montgomery County Public Schools, and from what we’ve seen in Q3 and now, Q4, I think that that was, in fact, much of the reason for the slow down.

Throughout the New River Valley, most of the metrics tracked showed nominal change from the same quarter in 2013 – median sales prices, inventory levels, and total sales were all basically flat. Where we saw the most fluctuation was in the various Towns and locales, with tracked metrics bouncing up and down all over the place.

As we head into winter, we expect to see the historical slowdown before the spring market heats up in Q2 2015, leaving opportunities for buyers and sellers who are ready, willing, and able to act now while rates continue to be held down.

To say that the second quarter of 2014 has been unusual would be an understatement. Pockets of the market excelled, while others did not. Inventory was up, median sales were down, and yet there were more contracts written in the second quarter of 2014 than there were in the second quarter of 2013.

While the New River Valley saw the strongest first quarter performance in the past five years in Q1, Q2 sales are the lowest they’ve been since 2011. Some properties have been flying off the shelves, while others – despite good prices – have been sitting idle for some time, and there’s admittedly some anxiety among sellers (and agents) as to specifically why. My line of thinking is that an extremely compressed summer for the public schools in Montgomery County is partly to blame, as families rushed to get vacation and camp plans together and not much thought was given to housing unless folks HAD to move. Nevertheless, it’s going to be interesting to see what shakes out in Q3 and Q4 of this year … the signs still tell us that there’s a potential for bounce back through the rest of the year, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Total Sales: Total sales increased almost 13% in Q1 2014 for the overall MSA in comparison to Q1 2013. With 296 homes solds, this shows a strong opening quarter for 2014 which is a positive indicator that we will see strong performance in the remainder of 2014.

Inventory: Total inventory levels increased 3.12% from Q1 2013. However, given the increase in sales this quarter, months of inventory decreased 8.59% compared to Q1 2013, which is an indicator of a strengthening market.

Contracts Written: The number of contracts written rose 2.11% from Q1 2013 which is yet another indicator that we will see strong activity this spring.

Median Home Prices: Median home prices have decreased overall by 8.96%; however, Christiansburg saw the median home price increase by 6.45%. With the increase in the number of sales and reduction in inventory, we expect to see the median home price increase for the overall MSA in the next two quarters of 2014.

The data relating to real estate on this website comes in part from the Broker Reciprocity/IDX (Internet Data Exchange) Program of the New River Valley Multiple Listing Service, Inc. Real estate listings held by brokerage firms other than Nest Realty are marked with the Broker Reciprocity logo (IDX) and detailed information about them includes the name of the broker.